Nemiya Rookwood

Introduction

Nemiya Rookwood is a former computer science teacher and cover supervisor at Lincoln University Technical College who was banned from teaching for at least eight years after a panel found he sent an unsolicited photograph of his erect penis to a group of young women he had met in a business context, made sexual comments to staff members, and asked a colleague to intercept a complaint call about his behaviour. The Teaching Regulation Agency panel found the image-sending and a cluster of surrounding allegations proved and sexually motivated; the decision maker, Marc Cavey, imposed an indefinite prohibition order on 5 December 2024 with a review period of eight years, set in recognition of proceedings that had dragged from 2019 to 2024.

Background Information

Rookwood, born April 1991, joined the school on 1 September 2016 as a cover supervisor through a supply agency and became a teacher there on 3 April 2017 — the school’s only computer science teacher, in a small staff. An investigation into allegations against him began on 8 May 2018; a disciplinary hearing followed on 23 May 2018 and his employment was terminated. The TRA proceedings that followed were protracted and troubled: the panel first convened on 25 November 2019, sat again across four days in September 2022, and considered a replacement notice of proceedings issued 7 July 2022 after allegations were amended during the process. He denied all allegations throughout, and the case was decided only on 4 December 2024.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated findings. The panel found proved, among others: sending one or more unsolicited intimate images of himself naked with his penis visible and erect to a group of young women he had met in a business context; telling a staff member he wanted to unbutton her skirt; a sexual comment in the presence of a colleague about increasing the girth of his penis; looking staff members up and down with suggestive noises; asking Staff Member B on 8 May 2018 to take a complaint call he knew she was not the right person to take, with the intention of concealing the complaint from senior colleagues; and failing to observe proper professional boundaries. Several allegations, including the central image allegation’s, were found sexually motivated.

The image allegation turned on his own admissions. Rookwood met the group — new business associates — at a hotel in Leeds after agreeing on a flight to do design work for their brand. When a group member called the school, a staff member spoke with her and later gave evidence that she confirmed the images had been sent unasked. Rookwood, confronted on 8 May 2018, confirmed he had sexually explicit images on his phone and had shared them, said they had gone via Snapchat so had disappeared, and sought to reassure the school that none of the women were under 18. The panel weighed the hearsay carefully — the group member never gave a statement or testified — but found his contemporaneous non-denial and his admission that no one had asked for the images decisive: his challenge was that the sending happened outside school hours, not that it happened. On the concealment finding, the panel found he asked a staff member to field an anticipated complaint call from a third party knowing she was not the appropriate person, with the intention that any complaint would be concealed from more senior colleagues. In the disciplinary meeting he acknowledged the matter could “massively” affect the school’s reputation, then argued that because it was on his own time and the images were sent via Snapchat, there should be no evidence of them.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case drew no press coverage; the decision is the public record. The panel found a strong public interest in protecting the public given the unsolicited explicit image sent to women he had only recently met, found the actions deliberate and sexually motivated, and was “concerned by Mr Rookwood’s lack of insight signifying a risk of repetition in the future”. It gave him credit for raising the matter himself with a colleague and admitting the image in the school’s process — but found his witness statement offered no explanation for or reflection on his conduct, his view being that off-hours conduct was simply not the school’s business, and that his representations focused on the financial cost of attending hearings rather than any assurance about future behaviour. The panel recommended prohibition; because of the years the proceedings had taken, it set an unusually long eight-year review period to acknowledge the lapse of time.

Current Status

Rookwood is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. He may apply for the order to be set aside, but not until 10 December 2032 — eight years from the order — and only if a fresh panel then agrees; without a successful application the prohibition is permanent in practice. The determination is dated 4 December 2024 with the decision maker’s order dated 5 December 2024, effective from service. He retains a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days of notice; the published record shows no appeal was filed. No criminal charge appears anywhere in the decision — the entire adjudication was regulatory.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The case maps a boundary the regulator polices off-campus: a teacher’s “own time” defence failed both at school level and before the panel, because the misconduct’s visibility — a school complaint, a business context that exposed the school’s name — made it a professional matter regardless of where it happened. The concealment finding is its sharpest lesson: the attempt to route a complaint call away from senior colleagues converted a sleazy-but-private act into a dishonesty-adjacent finding and showed the panel a continuing risk. The eight-year review period, the longest in recent published decisions, cut both ways — acknowledging proceedings that took five years and six hearing days while keeping him out of classrooms into the 2030s. Rookwood’s teaching career, barely eighteen months old when the investigation began, ended at 27 and remains closed until at least 2032.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Nemiya Rookwood” — source